Very good point. I’m not sure what these native people are dying of but they do seem to have a lack of Western diseases. It’s an area I want to explore much more deeply–looking at modern day hunter-gatherers.

The main take-home message is that neither apes nor hunter-gatherers eat grains or dairy. And they eat food taken directly from nature–fruits, veg, nuts, seeds and animal foods.

In the modern world the whole subject of eating meat has problems. What is the effect of cooking, farming, hormones and antibiotics and so on?

I am coming at this problem from a background of a raw vegan diet which mirrors the ape model more closely than the hunter-gatherer one. I felt amazing on that diet and that is a very powerful bench mark to have.

However I’m aware of long-term failures with such diets, so I’m keen to know the cause of these failures. Many can be explained by simply not eating enough, too heavy relience on fruit or nuts and even B12. The hunter-gatherer and evolutionary model could potentially give us clues as to the problems within raw vegan culture.

Given that cooked meats are heavily correlated to cancer in The China Study, even though correlation doesn’t prove causation, I think we’d be wise to minimize the use of meat as much as possible and look for alternatives.

The Okinawan diet did this successfully incidentally by the use of soya. Having the largest percentage of centenarians in the world, their diet is also one of importance.

Cheers,
Mike

Not that I disagree with the nutritional ideas laid out here, but I’m not convinced that they will cure cancer. Cancer is a disease of age. It is not modern or new–we get it because we live much longer than we used to live. These bushmen may be very healthy, but what is their lifespan?